IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/aah/create/2007-17.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Expected Stock Returns and Variance Risk Premia

Author

Listed:
  • Tim Bollerslev
  • Hao Zhou

    (School of Economics and Management, University of Aarhus, Denmark)

Abstract

We find that the difference between implied and realized variation, or the variance risk premium, is able to explain more than fifteen percent of the ex-post time series variation in quarterly excess returns on the market portfolio over the 1990 to 2005 sample period, with high (low) premia predicting high (low) future returns. The magnitude of the return predictability of the variance risk premium easily dominates that afforded by standard predictor variables like the P/E ratio, the dividend yield, the default spread, and the consumption-wealth ratio (CAY). Moreover, combining the variance risk premium with the P/E ratio results in an R2 for the quarterly returns of more than twenty-five percent. The results depend crucially on the use of “model-free”, as opposed to standard Black-Scholes, implied variances, and realized variances constructed from high-frequency intraday, as opposed to daily, data. Our findings suggest that temporal variation in both risk-aversion and volatility-risk play an important role in determining stock market returns.

Suggested Citation

  • Tim Bollerslev & Hao Zhou, 2007. "Expected Stock Returns and Variance Risk Premia," CREATES Research Papers 2007-17, Department of Economics and Business Economics, Aarhus University.
  • Handle: RePEc:aah:create:2007-17
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://repec.econ.au.dk/repec/creates/rp/07/rp07_17.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mark Britten‐Jones & Anthony Neuberger, 2000. "Option Prices, Implied Price Processes, and Stochastic Volatility," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(2), pages 839-866, April.
    2. Fama, Eugene F. & Schwert, G. William, 1977. "Asset returns and inflation," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 5(2), pages 115-146, November.
    3. Newey, Whitney & West, Kenneth, 2014. "A simple, positive semi-definite, heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation consistent covariance matrix," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 33(1), pages 125-132.
    4. Ivo Welch & Amit Goyal, 2008. "A Comprehensive Look at The Empirical Performance of Equity Premium Prediction," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 21(4), pages 1455-1508, July.
    5. Bekaert, Geert & Engstrom, Eric & Grenadier, Steven R., 2010. "Stock and bond returns with Moody Investors," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 17(5), pages 867-894, December.
    6. Fama, Eugene F & French, Kenneth R, 1992. "The Cross-Section of Expected Stock Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(2), pages 427-465, June.
    7. Schwert, G William, 1990. "Stock Volatility and the Crash of '87," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 3(1), pages 77-102.
    8. Lewellen, Jonathan & Nagel, Stefan & Shanken, Jay, 2010. "A skeptical appraisal of asset pricing tests," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(2), pages 175-194, May.
    9. Campbell, John Y., 1987. "Stock returns and the term structure," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 373-399, June.
    10. Meddahi, N., 2001. "A Theoretical Comparison Between Integrated and Realized Volatilies," Cahiers de recherche 2001-26, Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative, CIREQ.
    11. Merton, Robert C, 1973. "An Intertemporal Capital Asset Pricing Model," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 41(5), pages 867-887, September.
    12. Itamar Drechsler & Amir Yaron, 2008. "What's Vol Got to Do With It," 2008 Meeting Papers 282, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    13. Campbell, John Y. & Yogo, Motohiro, 2006. "Efficient tests of stock return predictability," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(1), pages 27-60, July.
    14. Martin Lettau & Sydney C. Ludvigson & Jessica A. Wachter, 2008. "The Declining Equity Premium: What Role Does Macroeconomic Risk Play?," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 21(4), pages 1653-1687, July.
    15. Owen Lamont, 1998. "Earnings and Expected Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 53(5), pages 1563-1587, October.
    16. Bekaert, Geert & Engstrom, Eric & Xing, Yuhang, 2009. "Risk, uncertainty, and asset prices," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(1), pages 59-82, January.
    17. John H. Cochrane & Monika Piazzesi, 2005. "Bond Risk Premia," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(1), pages 138-160, March.
    18. Peter Carr & Liuren Wu, 2004. "Variance Risk Premia," Finance 0409015, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Hui Guo & Robert F. Whitelaw, 2006. "Uncovering the Risk–Return Relation in the Stock Market," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 61(3), pages 1433-1463, June.
    20. Lewellen, Jonathan & Nagel, Stefan, 2006. "The conditional CAPM does not explain asset-pricing anomalies," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 82(2), pages 289-314, November.
    21. Weil, Philippe, 1989. "The equity premium puzzle and the risk-free rate puzzle," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(3), pages 401-421, November.
    22. Andrew W. Lo, A. Craig MacKinlay, 1988. "Stock Market Prices do not Follow Random Walks: Evidence from a Simple Specification Test," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 1(1), pages 41-66.
    23. Andrew Ang & Geert Bekaert, 2007. "Stock Return Predictability: Is it There?," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 20(3), pages 651-707.
    24. Gordon S. & St-Amour P., 2004. "Asset Returns and State-Dependent Risk Preferences," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 22, pages 241-252, July.
    25. Campbell, John Y & Shiller, Robert J, 1988. " Stock Prices, Earnings, and Expected Dividends," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 43(3), pages 661-676, July.
    26. Ang, Andrew & Liu, Jun, 2007. "Risk, return, and dividends," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(1), pages 1-38, July.
    27. Epstein, Larry G & Zin, Stanley E, 1991. "Substitution, Risk Aversion, and the Temporal Behavior of Consumption and Asset Returns: An Empirical Analysis," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 99(2), pages 263-286, April.
    28. Martin Lettau & Sydney Ludvigson, 2001. "Consumption, Aggregate Wealth, and Expected Stock Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(3), pages 815-849, June.
    29. Hodrick, Robert J, 1992. "Dividend Yields and Expected Stock Returns: Alternative Procedures for Inference and Measurement," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 5(3), pages 357-386.
    30. Ait-Sahalia, Yacine & Lo, Andrew W., 2000. "Nonparametric risk management and implied risk aversion," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 94(1-2), pages 9-51.
    31. Ang, Andrew & Hodrick, Robert J. & Xing, Yuhang & Zhang, Xiaoyan, 2009. "High idiosyncratic volatility and low returns: International and further U.S. evidence," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(1), pages 1-23, January.
    32. Lewellen, Jonathan, 2004. "Predicting returns with financial ratios," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(2), pages 209-235, November.
    33. Wayne E. Ferson & Sergei Sarkissian & Timothy T. Simin, 2003. "Spurious Regressions in Financial Economics?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 58(4), pages 1393-1413, August.
    34. Nour Meddahi, 2002. "A theoretical comparison between integrated and realized volatility," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 17(5), pages 479-508.
    35. Ole E. Barndorff‐Nielsen & Neil Shephard, 2002. "Econometric analysis of realized volatility and its use in estimating stochastic volatility models," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 64(2), pages 253-280, May.
    36. Andersen, Torben G. & Bollerslev, Tim & Christoffersen, Peter F. & Diebold, Francis X., 2006. "Volatility and Correlation Forecasting," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, in: G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), Handbook of Economic Forecasting, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 15, pages 777-878, Elsevier.
    37. Graham Elliott & Allan Timmermann, 2016. "Economic Forecasting," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 10740.
    38. Keim, Donald B. & Stambaugh, Robert F., 1986. "Predicting returns in the stock and bond markets," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(2), pages 357-390, December.
    39. Robert J. Shiller, 1984. "Stock Prices and Social Dynamics," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 15(2), pages 457-510.
    40. Mixon, Scott, 2007. "The implied volatility term structure of stock index options," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 14(3), pages 333-354, June.
    41. Campbell, John Y, 1991. "A Variance Decomposition for Stock Returns," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 101(405), pages 157-179, March.
    42. Bollerslev, Tim & Gibson, Michael & Zhou, Hao, 2011. "Dynamic estimation of volatility risk premia and investor risk aversion from option-implied and realized volatilities," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 160(1), pages 235-245, January.
    43. Torben G. Andersen & Tim Bollerslev & Francis X. Diebold, 2007. "Roughing It Up: Including Jump Components in the Measurement, Modeling, and Forecasting of Return Volatility," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 89(4), pages 701-720, November.
    44. Hsieh, David A, 1991. "Chaos and Nonlinear Dynamics: Application to Financial Markets," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 46(5), pages 1839-1877, December.
    45. George J. Jiang & Yisong S. Tian, 2005. "The Model-Free Implied Volatility and Its Information Content," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 18(4), pages 1305-1342.
    46. Hansen, Peter R. & Lunde, Asger, 2006. "Realized Variance and Market Microstructure Noise," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 24, pages 127-161, April.
    47. Fama, Eugene F. & French, Kenneth R., 1989. "Business conditions and expected returns on stocks and bonds," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 23-49, November.
    48. Wayne E. Ferson & Sergei Sarkissian & Timothy T. Simin, 2003. "Spurious Regressions in Financial Economics?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 58(4), pages 1393-1414, August.
    49. Andrew Ang & Robert J. Hodrick & Yuhang Xing & Xiaoyan Zhang, 2006. "The Cross‐Section of Volatility and Expected Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 61(1), pages 259-299, February.
    50. Andersen, Torben G. & Bollerslev, Tim & Diebold, Francis X. & Ebens, Heiko, 2001. "The distribution of realized stock return volatility," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(1), pages 43-76, July.
    51. Rosenberg, Joshua V. & Engle, Robert F., 2002. "Empirical pricing kernels," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(3), pages 341-372, June.
    52. John Y. Campbell & John Cochrane, 1999. "Force of Habit: A Consumption-Based Explanation of Aggregate Stock Market Behavior," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 107(2), pages 205-251, April.
    53. Ole E. Barndorff-Nielsen & Peter Reinhard Hansen & Asger Lunde & Neil Shephard, 2008. "Designing Realized Kernels to Measure the ex post Variation of Equity Prices in the Presence of Noise," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 76(6), pages 1481-1536, November.
    54. Fama, Eugene F. & French, Kenneth R., 1993. "Common risk factors in the returns on stocks and bonds," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 3-56, February.
    55. Bansal, Ravi & Khatchatrian, Varoujan & Yaron, Amir, 2005. "Interpretable asset markets?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 49(3), pages 531-560, April.
    56. Jackwerth, Jens Carsten, 2000. "Recovering Risk Aversion from Option Prices and Realized Returns," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 13(2), pages 433-451.
    57. Ravi Bansal & Amir Yaron, 2004. "Risks for the Long Run: A Potential Resolution of Asset Pricing Puzzles," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 59(4), pages 1481-1509, August.
    58. Kreps, David M & Porteus, Evan L, 1978. "Temporal Resolution of Uncertainty and Dynamic Choice Theory," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 46(1), pages 185-200, January.
    59. John H. Cochrane, 2008. "The Dog That Did Not Bark: A Defense of Return Predictability," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 21(4), pages 1533-1575, July.
    60. Brennan, Michael J. & Xia, Yihong, 2005. "tay's as good as cay," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 2(1), pages 1-14, March.
    61. Robert R. Bliss & Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou, 2004. "Option-Implied Risk Aversion Estimates," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 59(1), pages 407-446, February.
    62. Peter Nyberg & Anders Wilhelmsson, 2010. "Volatility Risk Premium, Risk Aversion, and the Cross‐Section of Stock Returns," The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association, vol. 45(4), pages 1079-1100, November.
    63. Fama, Eugene F & French, Kenneth R, 1988. "Permanent and Temporary Components of Stock Prices," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 96(2), pages 246-273, April.
    64. Tobias Adrian & Joshua Rosenberg, 2008. "Stock Returns and Volatility: Pricing the Short‐Run and Long‐Run Components of Market Risk," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(6), pages 2997-3030, December.
    65. Valkanov, Rossen, 2003. "Long-horizon regressions: theoretical results and applications," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(2), pages 201-232, May.
    66. Amit Goyal & Ivo Welch, 2003. "Predicting the Equity Premium with Dividend Ratios," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 49(5), pages 639-654, May.
    67. Fama, Eugene F. & French, Kenneth R., 1988. "Dividend yields and expected stock returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 3-25, October.
    68. Brandt, Michael W. & Wang, Kevin Q., 2003. "Time-varying risk aversion and unexpected inflation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(7), pages 1457-1498, October.
    69. Stambaugh, Robert F., 1999. "Predictive regressions," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(3), pages 375-421, December.
    70. John T. Scruggs, 1998. "Resolving the Puzzling Intertemporal Relation between the Market Risk Premium and Conditional Market Variance: A Two-Factor Approach," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 53(2), pages 575-603, April.
    71. Wu, Liuren, 2011. "Variance dynamics: Joint evidence from options and high-frequency returns," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 160(1), pages 280-287, January.
    72. Jacob Boudoukh & Matthew Richardson & Robert F. Whitelaw, 2008. "The Myth of Long-Horizon Predictability," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 21(4), pages 1577-1605, July.
    73. Geert Bekaert, 2004. "Conditioning Information and Variance Bounds on Pricing Kernels," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 17(2), pages 339-378.
    74. Shanken, Jay, 1992. "On the Estimation of Beta-Pricing Models," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 5(1), pages 1-33.
    75. Heston, Steven L, 1993. "A Closed-Form Solution for Options with Stochastic Volatility with Applications to Bond and Currency Options," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 6(2), pages 327-343.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bollerslev, Tim & Gibson, Michael & Zhou, Hao, 2011. "Dynamic estimation of volatility risk premia and investor risk aversion from option-implied and realized volatilities," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 160(1), pages 235-245, January.
    2. Maio, Paulo & Santa-Clara, Pedro, 2012. "Multifactor models and their consistency with the ICAPM," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(3), pages 586-613.
    3. Rapach, David & Zhou, Guofu, 2013. "Forecasting Stock Returns," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, in: G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), Handbook of Economic Forecasting, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 328-383, Elsevier.
    4. Schrimpf, Andreas, 2010. "International stock return predictability under model uncertainty," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 29(7), pages 1256-1282, November.
    5. Michael Scholz & Jens Perch Nielsen & Stefan Sperlich, 2012. "Nonparametric prediction of stock returns guided by prior knowledge," Graz Economics Papers 2012-02, University of Graz, Department of Economics.
    6. Qi Liu & Libin Tao & Weixing Wu & Jianfeng Yu, 2017. "Short- and Long-Run Business Conditions and Expected Returns," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(12), pages 4137-4157, December.
    7. Yu, Jialin, 2011. "Disagreement and return predictability of stock portfolios," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(1), pages 162-183, January.
    8. Maio, Paulo, 2016. "Cross-sectional return dispersion and the equity premium," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 87-109.
    9. Chen, Long, 2009. "On the reversal of return and dividend growth predictability: A tale of two periods," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(1), pages 128-151, April.
    10. Cochrane, John H., 2005. "Financial Markets and the Real Economy," Foundations and Trends(R) in Finance, now publishers, vol. 1(1), pages 1-101, July.
    11. John Y. Campbell, 2008. "Viewpoint: Estimating the equity premium," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 41(1), pages 1-21, February.
    12. Hsu, Po-Hsuan, 2009. "Technological innovations and aggregate risk premiums," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(2), pages 264-279, November.
    13. Bakshi, Gurdip & Panayotov, George & Skoulakis, Georgios, 2011. "Improving the predictability of real economic activity and asset returns with forward variances inferred from option portfolios," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 100(3), pages 475-495, June.
    14. Ang, Andrew & Liu, Jun, 2007. "Risk, return, and dividends," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(1), pages 1-38, July.
    15. Committee, Nobel Prize, 2013. "Understanding Asset Prices," Nobel Prize in Economics documents 2013-1, Nobel Prize Committee.
    16. Ludvigson, Sydney C. & Ng, Serena, 2007. "The empirical risk-return relation: A factor analysis approach," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(1), pages 171-222, January.
    17. Ferreira, Miguel A. & Santa-Clara, Pedro, 2011. "Forecasting stock market returns: The sum of the parts is more than the whole," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 100(3), pages 514-537, June.
    18. Paulo Maio, 2013. "Intertemporal CAPM with Conditioning Variables," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 59(1), pages 122-141, April.
    19. Pyun, Sungjune, 2019. "Variance risk in aggregate stock returns and time-varying return predictability," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 132(1), pages 150-174.
    20. Christopher J. Neely & David E. Rapach & Jun Tu & Guofu Zhou, 2014. "Forecasting the Equity Risk Premium: The Role of Technical Indicators," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(7), pages 1772-1791, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Return Predictability; Implied Variance; Realized Variance; Equity Risk Premium; Variance Risk Premium; Time-Varying Risk Aversion;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aah:create:2007-17. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.econ.au.dk/afn/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.